


And the Quarantine

by ChokolatteJedi



Category: The Librarians (TV 2014)
Genre: Episode Tag, Episode: s01e06 And the Fables of Doom, F/F, Hurt/Comfort, Magic, Pining, Princes & Princesses, What-If
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-24
Updated: 2015-12-24
Packaged: 2018-05-09 02:02:59
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5521391
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ChokolatteJedi/pseuds/ChokolatteJedi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Because, really, when fairy tales abruptly take over your bodies and minds, a bit of a quarantine period is in order.</p>
            </blockquote>





	And the Quarantine

**Author's Note:**

  * For [merryghoul](https://archiveofourown.org/users/merryghoul/gifts).



> This story is slightly AU in that it assumes that some time passes between the defeat of the wolves in the library and the scene where the Librarians leave.
> 
> Huge thanks to my beta, Russian Blue!

"I don't even know where these came from!" the Sheriff whined.

"We know," Eve said. "Let's get you up." She stepped forward to give the man a hand, but as she did so her gaze shifted to Cassandra.

Somehow, even as she emerged from a fight to the death, Cassandra still managed to look as poised and put together as ever. It was absolutely charming. Eve could honestly stare all day at Cassandra looking so sharp and smug.

"Baird!" Jake growled.

Eve snapped her head to the side and saw Jake glaring at her, the Sheriff beside him. Right, the sheriff. Right, the curse! And the Libris Fabula! And the fact that she was generally not the type to swoon over one of her charges on the job, and the fact that the curse had turned her into exactly that kind of person!

Even if that charge was totally swoon-worthy right now, and they had just saved the day, so surely they deserved a little celebratory time off...

"Baird!" Jake said again.

Okay, we need a quarantine!" Eve declared. "A quarantine until we can be sure that all the... _effects_ have passed."

"The effects of what?" The Sheriff asked, but Eve ignored him, trusting that Jake would take care of it.

"We'll be more effective if we split up. We'll cover more ground. Jake, take the sheriff here and set up a quarantine. He should know who he can trust." She gave him a subtle hand signal to indicate that he should double check each candidate for lingering craziness, and he nodded.

"While you're at it, call Ezekiel. He needs to check in regularly from the hospital and tell us if anyone new seems to be affected, or if anyone has life-threatening wounds."

"Also, see if Jenkins is affected. If so, keep him contained, too, and have him contact Flynn. If not, send him back to the Library to monitor the reversion."

"Cassandra and I will patrol the ro-" Eve turned to indicate Cassandra and suddenly felt like her brain had forgotten how to speak. Cassandra was playing with some blue fire in her hands and she was just so powerful! Powerful and amazing and charming!

"Baird!" Jake yelled. "You'll patrol the what?"

"The rooftops!" she said, snapping to attention again. "All ninjas know to beware of threats from above!"

That seemed to satisfy Jake, so Eve turned and stalked away. "Come on Cassandra," she called back. Perhaps if she didn't actually look at the other girl, she'd stop swooning and forgetting how to talk.

|\/\/|

"Well, this is certainly a lovely view," Cassandra said, looking out at the sunset.

"Yes, it is," Baird replied.

From the tone of her voice, Cassandra knew she wasn't looking at the town. "And a good tactical advantage if we need to prevent any more incidents." That was something that both her mathematical brain and her medieval royalty brain recognized, and she hoped that thinking about tactics might snap Baird back to her usual personality.

Baird hummed lyrically.

Well, so much for getting her Baird back. Cassandra knew that her Baird wouldn't take advantage of this situation. Her Baird would quote some military rule about not getting involved with someone you guarded, or worked with, or something. Her Baird would keep Cassandra at a distance, maybe even sending her off with one of the others. Her Baird would stop looking at her with eyes that made Cassandra think that maybe they could actually make this work if she wasn't considered the most useless Librarian in the field and slowly dying from a brain tumor.

Her Baird wouldn't make Cassandra the one who had to say no.

"I wish I knew how to flip you to ninja mode," she whispered.

"No need. I'm never not in ninja mode," Baird said. "And now I'm alliterating like him. Shoot me now."

That sounded more like Cassandra's Baird, and she started to hope again, even as she wondered how her whisper had carried across the rooftop.

"Ninjas don't miss much," Baird continued, making Cassandra wonder for one brief instant if ninjas could read minds, too. "Can you turn off the Merlin part?"

Cassandra examined her hand, which hadn't suddenly glowed blue for about twenty minutes now. "Not really, but it seems to come and go. Much like your other..." Cassandra trailed off, not really sure how to phrase that last part.

Fortunately Baird didn't seem to mind. "So you're an actual person, instead of an archetype. Is that different? I mean, can you remember things he did or talk like him or anything?"

"You mean can I control his powers as well as he could?" Cassandra tried to keep the bitterness out of her tone. After all, she had wanted her Baird back. She just didn't want to go back to being the useless one.

"I didn't say that! I just wanted to know if it was different being Merlin than it was being just a prince."

"Oh." Cassandra thought about that, searching the feelings and emotions that she had been classifying as 'not herself' ever since they realized that they were in a fairy tale story.

"I don't have his memories or anything," she said. "Just his power, and I think some spell knowledge?"

"Any particular area? Battle magic, healing, curses... that sort of thing? Anything we could use to finish up the tail end of this spell or get the little girl healthy again faster?"

Part of Cassandra's mind began whirling with spells and ideas for magical-mechanical inventions and calculating medical ingredients in conjunction with spell damage aftermath. But part, a small, purely Cassandra part, froze, blankly repeating Baird's last sentence.

_Get the little girl healthy again._

Finally she realized that someone was shaking her shoulder, and Cassandra turned to Baird, wide-eyed.

"I think I can use it to cure my tumor."

|\/\/|

Cassandra wasn't totally sure, but Baird stared at her with eyes that said that she could do anything, so she started making preparations for the spell.

Jenkins approved, with a minimum of grumbling about her head exploding, so Cassandra continued making preparations.

Jake swung by, eyed her sketch with his bionic eye, and quickly paced out the framework of the spell's rune sequence, so Cassandra felt more confident about going forward.

By the time Ezekiel showed up with a magical "lucky coin" in response to her request for a small piece of alloyed metal, Cassandra began to think that maybe this spell would succeed after all.

And all the while, Baird stared at her, and smiled, and confidently proclaimed that Cassandra could do anything she ever attempted.

As much as Cassandra wanted to take comfort in that, she knew it was just the spell talking. Her Baird wouldn't be so confident in her abilities, or so willing to let Cassandra take charge, or so unaware of herself as to give Cassandra those loving looks.

Still, she could pretend, couldn't she?

|\/\/|

As Baird led the newly de-quarantined Librarians back to the door, she watched Cassandra out of the corner of her eye. The other girl was moving with a confidence she hadn't shown before, and her radiant smile was infectious.

It took everything Eve had to keep from smiling back just as broadly. The princess she had been would have smiled, but without even realizing the significance of why. Eve knew the significance, and she wanted to beam with pride and love for Cassandra.

But Cassandra was her charge; someone she had to protect. Eve couldn't afford to lose focus.

Though she would miss having the excuse of being an enraptured princess to hide behind whenever Cassandra caught her staring. She would just need to use her ninja stealth moves the next time.


End file.
